


Brothers

by VeritySilvers



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 17:26:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8722522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeritySilvers/pseuds/VeritySilvers
Summary: Percy and Vax, and what changed after Percy died.  Implied Percy/Vex and Keyleth/Vax.  A Critical Role Bang fic.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on Tumblr, and was written for @tophatgoat's (http://tophatgoat.tumblr.com/) lovely artwork.

 

Before Percy died, Vax hadn’t been quite so friendly.

Oh, it wasn’t that he was unfriendly, exactly — he’d never been actually hostile. But the easy and open friendship they’d once shared had died with Vex in the Sunken Tomb, and despite all their travels and trials after that dark day, Vax’s attitude towards Percy had been considerably cooler than before ever since.

Percy hadn’t blamed him for it, in truth. If anything, it was something of a relief. He felt like the others had too easily forgiven him. Even Vex herself: it felt as though she’d been too quick to brush away his flaws, the errors he’d made that led to her paying the ultimate price. She’d laughed, back when she’d been newly breathing and he’d admitted his fault in her death — she’d laughed, sad but not bitter, and she’d never once so much as glanced at him with accusation or fear in her eyes. The others had done the same. He’d been welcomed back into the fold as though he’d done nothing terrible, nothing with any real repercussions, nothing to fret over.

As though he hadn’t actually caused her death, as though it wasn’t all his fault and his fault alone that she had been lifeless at his feet.

Vax, though… Vax looked at him with hard eyes, and Percy knew that he had not forgotten. Forgiven, perhaps: for all his unhappiness and melodrama, Vax had a soft heart and a kind soul. But forgiveness was not absolution, and in Vax’s flinty gaze Percy saw the other man’s remembrance of his own sins.

It was almost a relief to have someone else in Vox Machina recognize him for what he was, and Percy valued that. Vax, for all his flaws, was an honest man; he neither hated nor loved without cause, and he gave his trust only once it was earned. With every curt exchange between them, with every grudging conversation shared, with every time Vax turned away from him without a polite greeting or farewell, Percy felt the snubs for what they were: reminders.

 _You killed her_ , he heard, over and over again, reflected in the hard glint in Vax’s eyes. _You killed her, you bastard, and I won’t let you do it again._

Percy shouldn’t have found that reassuring, but he had. Vex’s death had been awful — the worst day of his past five years, and some nights, depending on which nightmares he’d suffered through, he wondered if it wasn’t the worst day of his life in totality. The Briarwoods, yes, of course — but he was nothing more than a victim there, young and too vulnerable. He’d been the prey, and had suffered for sins not of his own causing.

Vex had died because of his own hubris, his own pride: he was flawed, and she paid the price for it. That made Percy’s stomach roil in self-hatred and disgust: was he such a man, he wondered with despair, to blithely step aside and let others suffer in his stead? To not think of how his actions affected others, or worse, to simply not care?

And that it was Vex, of all people, only worsened his self-loathing. It would have been a tragedy no matter who had died, regardless of the fact that they’d been successful with the revivification. But that he managed to kill Vex — beautiful, bright-eyed Vex, with her easy smile and affectionate endearments, who above everyone else made him feel like he was more than a monster, that he might be able to be simply a man again for her, that he might be able to make her laugh and enjoy the spark of delight in her yes…

Well. It meant his nightmares were frighteningly tailored to his worst fears, and that his hands shook when he thought of her still body lying sprawled out on the tomb’s floor.

Vax had remembered, and Vax had blamed him, and some days Percy had needed that blame. Vax’s cold shoulder had been almost comforting for what it represented: someone else remembered, someone saw through his mask, someone knew what he was capable of doing, of causing. Someone had their eye on him, and someone would stop him if he ever — ever, through deliberate deed or careless thought — began to do something so utterly foolish and dangerous again.

Percy had grown used to Vax’s less-than-friendly habits, and in a way, he’d come to accept the loss of their earlier friendship. Vax was, if nothing else, predictable; Percy could neither blame him for his actions nor expect him to do otherwise, not after Vax’s own goddess confirmed for him that he was and would forever be a broken man.

He’d built a shrine to the Raven Queen in Whitestone after that, as a way of thanking Vax for his vigilance. He could never tell Vax aloud, after all, how much he valued the other man’s watchful eyes, not when those eyes were still bitter and resentful.

But then Percy had died, and the strange not-quite-friendship he and Vax shared shifted in the aftermath.

Oh, there had been many such shifts, of course, with more people than simply Vax. It would have been odd if there hadn’t been: his death might have been temporary, but it was still death. He might have been called back from beyond, his soul returned and his body healed, but that didn’t negate the fact that he had been utterly and completely dead in the meantime.

In some ways, Percy thought that he had the easier end of the bargain: physical suffering, but no mental anguish. The others had been forced to confront the reality of his death, the immediate aftermath filled with fear and grief and loss. They’d mourned for him, he suspected, each in their own way and in varying intensities. But they’d suffered the loss, and they’d had to live through it: he’d been blissfully unaware of any suffering until he’d awoken once more in a pain-wracked body.

And Vax — Vax, of all people — had been the first to step up and heal him.

He doesn’t recall much about being dead: impressions, mostly. He remembers Keyleth’s hand, pulling him away from Orthax, and then later, the thread of her voice guiding him back to a path he hadn’t known he’d lost. He had heard Vex’s voice, low and broken and needy, pulling him back down that long walkway. He can’t remember any words, anything the two women said to him: but he heard their voices, grieving and beseeching, and they’d called him home. He had seen black feathers, and heard Pike singing something in Celestial; there had been the stones of Whitestone, and the sense of being lifted up by strong arms.

He’d asked Pike, afterward, how Vox Machina had managed to bring him back.

“Oh,” the cleric had said, wide-eyed and only a little embarrassed. “We — we all helped, really. A group effort. I mean, I cast the spell, and Scanlan inspired me, and Vex — talked, and Keyleth talked, and saved you from Orthax, and Grog brought you in, and Vax helped Keyleth so — so it was all of us, really.”

Her eyes had been red-rimmed still, when she looked at him, and Percy thought of how she must have have been so afraid for them as they had gone away without her, and how her large kind heart must have broken when the others returned with his body.  
Still, her words confirmed what Percy suspected: Vox Machina had worked together to bring him home. Even Vax, who perhaps was the only one to understand and remember the price of his failings, had helped.

Percy had been more touched that he wanted to admit by that knowledge, and thought it went a long way towards explaining the little changes in how the others treated him.

Vex tiptoed around him as though she walked on eggshells, overly protective and oddly nervous, hesitating where she’d never paused before. Keyleth cosseted him, bringing him the little blue flowers he’d once remarked were his favorite and checking in on him more often than before. Grog turned around occasionally when they traveled together, as though ascertaining his whereabouts, and then he would nod his head, as though he were satisfied Percy was still present. Scanlan laughed brighter and sang softer, and if his jokes and barbs were just as frequent as ever, they were never sharp, and never aimed at him. Pike clutched her holy symbol whenever they talked, and her wistful little smile was somehow both hopeful and guilty when she aimed it in his direction.

Vax, though — Vax started touching him.

Percy had thought it accidental, at first. A hand on his elbow, a pat on his back, a tap against his shoulder. They were all things that could be explained away, either by the stress of the situation or by mere forgetfulness on Vax’s part. They were nothing special, after all — nothing that a man might not do among friends.

But Percy knew Vax did not consider them to be friends. They had been, once, and Percy had suffered through the other man’s casual touch then, but it had all stopped the instant Vex had lain dead between them. Percy had found it a relief, frankly: he still doesn’t like to be touched, not after the Briarwoods and Ripley, and he hadn’t been overfond of Vax’s constant contact back when it had been offered. It had been the one bright side to losing Vax’s favor.

But Vax’s hands now were too deliberate to be chance, too studiously casual to be actually thoughtless. It was not difficult for Percy to deduce that Vax was, for whatever reason, consciously choosing once more to touch him.

For another few days, Percy toyed with the idea that it was somehow devotional: he had died, and Vax served the goddess of death. Perhaps, he thought, there was some kind of blemish, some residual stain death left upon him; perhaps Vax was only interested in placing his hands on him out of a sense of devotion to his goddess.

But the longer it went since his death with Vax still making excuses to reach out to him, the thinner that excuse wore.

Eventually it reached preposterous levels. Vax draped an arm around Percy’s shoulders as they walked together down to the armory, for absolutely no reason at all. Vax leaned against Percy’s side as they sat around the campfire, Keyleth curled into Vax’s arms and Vax’s back casually resting against Percy as though Percy were nothing more than a convenient pillow. Vax patted his cheek condescendingly after Percy made a comment about the clearly-poisoned blacksmith — that, actually, was the nearest to their old relationship Percy had seen in weeks, and it was almost reassuring except that it was still so strange.

Percy could think of no obvious reason for it, and after six increasingly odd weeks — days filled with terror and dragons and preparations and more dragons and Vex, happy laughing Vex in his arms as though he never killed her and he never died and neither of them had even been broken — Percy looked down at Vax and decided he’d had enough.

“All right,” he said, and he lowered the book he’d been reading because what else did one do when a half-elf rogue used one’s laps as a pillow. “This is officially ridiculous.”

“Mmph,” Vax replied, squinting up at him, clearly unhappy to be awakened. “Huh?”

“This,” Percy repeated firmly, “is getting out of hand.”

“What now?” Vax asked, and yawned.

“This,” Percy said firmly, and gestured with the hand not holding his book. “I can put up with all the little things — grabbing my arm, touching my shoulder, even sitting right next to me at dinner. But sleeping on me is officially ridiculous.”

Vax yawned again, but clearly saw no reason to move. “No, it isn’t,” he disagreed. “The benches out here are horrific for your back, really, and you might be bony, but you’re a sight better than anything else out here to use as a pillow. And it’s not like you were going anywhere with that book anyway — I figured I’d be able to get an hour’s nap in, and gods know I needed it.”

“That’s not the point,” Percy said, resisting the urge to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “The point is, you’re acting strangely and it’s time for this nonsense to stop.”

Vax grinned, wolfish and completely disarming, full of unrealized charm and wicked laughter. “I knew you’d notice it eventually,” he said, and he pulled himself up to sit beside Percy. “Faster than I thought, actually, though I’ll admit I was starting to get really obvious with all the touching lately.”

“I’m very observant,” Percy said dryly, and eyed Vax through his glasses with a bit of apprehension. “And I’d really appreciate it if you’d at least tone it down.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint you,” Vax said. “You don’t like being touched, yeah? Bit twitchy about it still, I get it. But I’ve got two good reasons for it.” And he brought up a finger. “First, if I get you used to it, it’s less likely you’ll forget yourself and do something stupid like flinch or jerk back when my sister or Keyleth or Pike or whoever surprises you by touching you when you don’t expect it. I mean, we all know you’re a bit of a stuck-up prick, but you don’t want to go making them feel guilty about forgetting that occasionally, do you?”

He looked at Percy expectantly, and Percy flushed. More than once, he’d apologized to Vex for simply being startled by her hand brushing across the back of his neck; he’d whirled on Scanlan once, and had almost broken the gnome’s fingers where they’d attempted to wiggle into his ear as a taunt. Percy couldn’t deny Vax’s reason had a fair amount of logic behind it, even if he rather disapproved of the methodology Vax was using to accomplish it.

Vax lifted up a second finger. “And second…” He grimaced, and his eyes shifted like he wanted to look away but wouldn’t let himself. “Well, you’re sort of with my sister these days. And I’m with your sort of sister.” He shrugged, dropped his head, and then looked up to give Percy a downright smug grin. “Which makes us sort of brothers, yeah? And I think I’m older than you, which means, little brother mine…” And he reached out and punched Percy — harder than expected, likely harder than truly necessary. “… that I get to annoy the shit out of you whenever I want, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Percy, stunned almost to speechlessness, stared at Vax. Finally, “I don’t think that’s how brothers work,” he managed to reply.

“I’m pretty sure it is,” Vax corrected instantly. “Come on, Percy, I bet you annoyed your brothers all the time when you were all little. It’s what brothers do.”

“We were —” And Percy stopped speaking. Memories rose, for once not as painful as most recollections of earlier times were, and after a long moment he grimaced again. “All right, we were awful. You have a point.”

“Of course I do,” Vax crowed happily. He shifted in his seat, and within seconds, he lay back down with his head again resting against Percy’s thigh. “So stop complaining, four-eyes. Go back to your book and let me nap. I could use the sleep and you could use an hour’s peace.”

Percy took a deep breath, but Vax cut him off. “Don’t, all right?” the half-elf ordered him, already shutting his eyes. “Just leave it. We’ll be fine, and Vex will be happy, and Keyleth will be happy, and it’ll all work out. It always does.”

Percy would like to argue, but can’t bring himself to say anything. Instead, he lifted his book almost automatically, still too stunned to protest. He glanced down at Vex, and almost shivered.

He has not had a brother in a long time. He’d been happy to befriend Keyleth, to stand next to her as a companion and as something like a brother — she had been a sister to him when he hadn’t known how badly he’d needed one, and even discovering Cassandra alive had not diminished the feeling that Keyleth was just as precious to him as a sister by blood.

But he had not expected to have a brother ever again, not with the brothers he’d been given by birth long since buried in Whitestone’s crypts. Vax’s words meant more to him than he was willing to admit, more than he could really process or contemplate.  
So Percy locked down the rising feelings of relief, of happiness, of acceptance, and turned his eyes towards the printed words on the pages of his books once more. Vax was right: he could use an hour of peace and quiet, and it was no real hardship to let Vax sleep resting on him in the meantime.

For his brother, Percy thought. For his sister, for Vex, for this strange new family of friends he’s become a part of, for the future he thought he’d never had. For all of that, he would learn to stop fearing touches. Hesitantly, he lifted his left hand, and brought it down on Vax’s left arm where it lay alongside him. Vax’s arm was lean and well-muscled, relaxed and warm; it didn’t move when Percy rested his fingers there, casually, just above his elbow.

Little steps, Percy thought, and learning to trust, and brotherhood.

He left his hand there until Vax awoke nearly an hour later, and found that it did not feel awkward in the least to clap his hand against Vax’s shoulder in thanks afterward as they went off to find the others.


End file.
